bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-16537029
Anyone know any more about this? why are they striking ? what do they get paid conditions etc?.
its like every where else ,change in terms and conditions /pay cut /redundancy /no job securaty when they change the t and c longer shift lenghts . its not going to make the price of fuel any cheaper .just the bosses more profit
i’d sack the [zb]ing lot of them.
remember the mines. good job, good wage, good pension. yet thay wanted more, so they shut the mines.
same as sea france.
limeyphil:
i’d sack the [zb]ing lot of them.
remember the mines. good job, good wage, good pension. yet thay wanted more, so they shut the mines.
same as sea france.
Well I worked atpit and I wasnt on good good money…had a good job (steel burner)…and I wuddent have left to drive a truck
according to my coal supplier, the demand for coal is high at the moment in the uk, and its costing more to import it then it would to mine it within uk,
The drivers are being asked to work more hours for same pay. At the minute they are on around £16 an hour. I think they want to take the extra weeks holiday they were given last year.
Still a good job in my opinion. I worked for Esso in the 80’s and lost my job after a year when they contracted out the bulk of the work.
It’s easy to say sack them all, but if you are on that pay scheme and living to that level of earnings it’s crap when you are going to lose some of it.
I could have been working for Wincanton a couple of years ago on the Conoco contract but didn’t because I like what I do, even though the money is substantially less. However, I get weekends and bank holidays off.
I am here: maps.google.com/maps?ll=52.920421,-1.286391
dle1uk:
according to my coal supplier, the demand for coal is high at the moment in the uk, and its costing more to import it then it would to mine it within uk,
If you were extracting it open-cast maybe, but not deep mined.
My dad worked in on the petrol tanks for near on 40 years never leaving a firm . Only the name on the trucks changed every few years due to the firms undercutting each other for contracts .Thay all have to pay the same for the trucks ,fuel ,ins ect so the only other saving is driver wages .You cant blame the oil companies for taking a cheaper bid for the work . its the likes of wincanton,hoyer ect asuming the driver will take the brunt of the poor costing and despiration to take on poor contracts .For many years my dad was happy in his job a will admit it was a good number but for the last 10 or so years it was a rubbish job .when he finnished last year he was worse of than what he was nearly 20 years ago so you can see why the drivers have the hump
gnasty gnome:
dle1uk:
according to my coal supplier, the demand for coal is high at the moment in the uk, and its costing more to import it then it would to mine it within uk,If you were extracting it open-cast maybe, but not deep mined.
it is cheaper to deep mine the coal in the UK. but the miners played right into thatchers hands, and she shut the mines.
i would never cross a picket line, no matter what the reason for the strike is. i didn’t agree with the miners strikes, sea france strikes, or the wincanton strikes.
limeyphil:
i’d sack the [zb]ing lot of them.
remember the mines. good job, good wage, good pension. yet thay wanted more, so they shut the mines.
same as sea france.
It’s not about wanting more, it’s about stopping the errosion of of terms and conditions - not only at Conoco Phillips, but across the tanker industry as a whole. Why should drivers and the companies who employ them have pay for Oil companies bonuses and creamy lifestyles. This is the contract principle driving down costs at the drivers expence.
If this does kicks off, then you can expect to see support from all drivers who are contracted to Oil companies like Shell, BP, Texaco etc… and we know what that’ll mean.
As a whole there should be a minimum standard of terms and conditions applied to all aspects of the haulage industry, so it doesn’t matter who’s name is on the door of the truck, (The minimum wage is not what I mean either). If there is a level playing field, then contracts can be awarded on merit, not cost.
limeyphil:
it is cheaper to deep mine the coal in the UK. but the miners played right into thatchers hands, and she shut the mines.
Here we go again. Fact; Labour shut more mines in the 60’s and 70’s than the Tories did in the 80’s and 90’s. Fact; most of those pits were clapped out. If they had reserves they’d not been invested in; much of the equipment was ancient. Intransigent unions and inept management, coupled with a weakening demand for the high-sulphur coal which the majority of Britain’s deep mines produced, were as much to blame for the demise of the mining industry as anything else.
A question I always ask, Phil; if the strike was as political as it’s made out to be, why is it that thirteen years of the succeeding Labour government did not see one coal mine re-open? My view, for what it’s worth, is that when the industry was decimated (and I don’t dispute that it was a brutal process) Labour breathed a quiet sigh of relief, knowing that only a Conservative government could have done what, unfortunately, was in many ways a necessary process? You wouldn’t expect the government to subsidise Tesco for groceries, even if it mean redundancies as a result, but we were happy to subsidise the coal industry to the extent that joe public and British industry was effectively paying double for every ton of coal.
For the record, the strike cost me my job too; unfortunately I didn’t get a lump-sum payout and a tidy pension as I was a lorry driver not a miner. Nor did I get offered re-training programmes which flooded the haulage industry (already losing work) with newly-qualified HGV drivers and drove our wages down even further; not the miners’ fault admittedly but it happened.
that last labour government, were not a true labour government, they were more tory than labour, they just wore red ties.
limeyphil:
that last labour government, were not a true labour government, they were more tory than labour, they just wore red ties.
Bit of truth in that. Mind you, it was only when they reverted to traditional Labour ideas (massive public spending, or buying votes if you like) that the wheels came off their wagon. Go figure.
gnasty gnome:
limeyphil:
that last labour government, were not a true labour government, they were more tory than labour, they just wore red ties.Bit of truth in that. Mind you, it was only when they reverted to traditional Labour ideas (massive public spending, or buying votes if you like) that the wheels came off their wagon. Go figure.
that’s true.
so, whether it’s a tory, labour, or coalition.
we are all [zb]ed.
gnasty gnome:
limeyphil:
it is cheaper to deep mine the coal in the UK. but the miners played right into thatchers hands, and she shut the mines.Here we go again. Fact; Labour shut more mines in the 60’s and 70’s than the Tories did in the 80’s and 90’s. Fact; most of those pits were clapped out. If they had reserves they’d not been invested in; much of the equipment was ancient. Intransigent unions and inept management, coupled with a weakening demand for the high-sulphur coal which the majority of Britain’s deep mines produced, were as much to blame for the demise of the mining industry as anything else.
A question I always ask, Phil; if the strike was as political as it’s made out to be, why is it that thirteen years of the succeeding Labour government did not see one coal mine re-open? My view, for what it’s worth, is that when the industry was decimated (and I don’t dispute that it was a brutal process) Labour breathed a quiet sigh of relief, knowing that only a Conservative government could have done what, unfortunately, was in many ways a necessary process? You wouldn’t expect the government to subsidise Tesco for groceries, even if it mean redundancies as a result, but we were happy to subsidise the coal industry to the extent that joe public and British industry was effectively paying double for every ton of coal.
But the foreign coal industry was being subsidised a lot more than that which made imports look a lot cheaper than they actually were.
And like we’re all so much better off now under present fuel prices in Thatcher’s and Blair’s brave new global free market economy in which we’re a net importer of coal and gas because she closed the mines and flogged off all the gas for export. 
The reason why thirteen years of a so called ‘Labour’ government didn’t re open the coal mines that Thatcher closed was because she sealed them and flooded them etc etc to make sure that we’d be reliant on her commie east european friends in the future instead of remaining self sufficient and Blair was no Labour prime minister just as zb Wilson or Callaghan wasn’t. 
mines were not closed in the 60’s and 70’s.
there were however many mergers. so there was the same amount of mines, but less companies running them.
Carryfast:
Blair was no Labour prime minister just as zb Wilson or Callaghan wasn’t.
So who, in your opinion, was? Since you’ve discounted Wilson and Callaghan that only leaves Attlee and Ramsay McDonald; the latter often vilified (and in fact expelled) by his own party for “selling out” to the Conservative and Liberal National government, and Attlee, who although generally accepted to be an honest and decent man, nevertheless opposed re-armament prior to WW2, which if followed would have seen us speaking German, and presided over a split in the party caused by an austerity budget to pay for the Korean War, the knock-on effect of which was to lose them the next election.
Now who says history doesn’t repeat itself? 
limeyphil:
mines were not closed in the 60’s and 70’s.
there were however many mergers. so there was the same amount of mines, but less companies running them.
Sorry Phil, have to disagree. Between 1964 and 1970, 277 pits were closed. I accept that some would’ve been merged, and some exhausted, but I stand by my initial statement.
BTW it was all run by one company then… and IMO that was part of the problem.
gnasty gnome:
Carryfast:
Blair was no Labour prime minister just as zb Wilson or Callaghan wasn’t.So who, in your opinion, was? Since you’ve discounted Wilson and Callaghan that only leaves Attlee and Ramsay McDonald; the latter often vilified (and in fact expelled) by his own party for “selling out” to the Conservative and Liberal National government, and Attlee, who although generally accepted to be an honest and decent man, nevertheless opposed re-armament prior to WW2, which if followed would have seen us speaking German, and presided over a split in the party caused by an austerity budget to pay for the Korean War, the knock-on effect of which was to lose them the next election.
Now who says history doesn’t repeat itself?
Idiots the lot of em.The question isn’t who was it’s who would/should have been,from the time when it all started going pear shaped during the 1970’s.Probably a Labour and Conservative coailtion with Peter Shore and Enoch Powell as leaders whereas what we actually ended up with was a bunch of tossers from Wilson and Callaghan to Thatcher and Blair who all seem to have made a great job of looking after the interests of every other country except our own and now to add insult to injury we’ve got zb Cam and Clegg. 